After resolving the final round of legal obstacles, a judge in Los Angeles has planned a hearing for next week to decide whether Lyle and Erik Menendez should be eligible for release after more than three decades behind the bars.
The long -awaited hearing, which was first planned for December and was then repeatedly postponed, will now take place in two days on 13 and 14 May, the judge, Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court, said Friday.
Again, family members of the brothers arranged to travel to Los Angeles for the procedure. Others, including people who were imprisoned with them and correctional officials who supervised their imprisonment, were also planning to testify that the brothers have been rehabilitated and no longer pose a danger to the community.
The Menendez brothers have had the bars since the spring of 1990, when they were arrested and accused of killing their parents the last summer. The brothers were in the quay of the parental home in Beverly Hills, California, and killed their parents with shotgun explosions while the few television watched and ate ice.
The crime, and the fact that it took place in such a rich, exclusive community, fascinated the country. And the case has never given its grasp on the consciousness of the nation, completely maintained by numerous dramatic and documentary treatments.
During their processes, the brothers had sustained that they had been sexually abused for years by their father, Jose Menendez, and that their mother, Kitty Menendez, was complicit because she knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop. They said they were killed for fear of their own lives, afraid that their parents would first kill them to prevent the secrets of the family.
During their first process the brothers were tried together, but with individual juries. The judge gave the defense great latitude to offer witness and evidence about sexual abuse and the trial was sent to a national audience. Every jury losted and a mistrial was explained.
In the years after their beliefs, the brothers apparently did every legal way to have their affairs assessed. And then last fall, after two new shows appeared on Netflix – a dramatic series by producer Ryan Murphy and a documentary – new legal possibilities emerged.
At the same time on behalf of the social media campaigns, organized by young people who believe that proof of sexual abuse should have been a mitigating factor in the process, exerting pressure on civil servants to reconsider the case.
Last fall, George Gascón, when the public prosecutor of Los Angeles, asked a court to bring the brothers to life for up to 50 years with the possibility of conditional release. Because the brothers were younger than 25 at the time of the crime, the punishment sought by Mr. Gascón would immediately qualify for conditional release.
Subsequently, Mr Gascón was defeated in the November election by Nathan J. Hochman, whose campaign encouraged a more punitive approach to the prosecution of crime.
Mr. Hochman had a very different view of the brothers of the Menendez and he resisted them, and said they had not succeeded in showing ‘full insight’ in their crimes. In particular, he said that Lyle, now 57, and Erik, now 54, had never rejected their claim that they had acted in self -defense, which Mr Hochman called a lie.
Mr. Hochman tried to withdraw the weekly petition of Mr Gascon, but Judge Jesic rejected his request. On Friday, Mr. Hochman again asked the court to allow his office to withdraw the petition on the basis of new information from a recently completed report from the Parole Board of the State about the time of the brothers in prison. That report was compiled on behalf of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is considering a separate clement for the brothers.
In the court, Mr Hochman said that the report cited the violations of the rules of the brothers, including their use of mobile phones.
Judge Jesic, however, said the report that stays under seal, did not contain much new information and he denied Mr. Hochman’s motion to withdraw the petition.
Given the position of Mr. Hochman, the proceedings have increasingly become an opponent and the brothers’ lawyers tried to have the office of the public prosecutor from the case. But one of the lawyers of the brothers, Mark Geragos, withdrew the request on Friday in the interest of moving the procedure, he said.
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